The Abilene Reporter-News weekly gas price survey taken Thursday sNew howed a spike of 14.2 cents from a week earlier, after inching up over a span of several weeks. The 10-station average was $3.159 a gallon.
Although the local gas prices were below the national average, the AAA's Fuel Gauge Report showed a smaller increase — 8.3 cents — over the Thursday-to-Thursday time frame for the country at large. The national average was $3.228 in Thursday's AAA report.
Meanwhile, crude prices backed off Thursday afternoon after topping $100 a barrel during the day on futures contracts for April delivery on the York Mercantile Exchange. The settled price at the end of the day was $97.49 a barrel.
Some analysts attribute much of the spike in crude prices to a "fear factor."
Libya, on the North African coast, has been the most recent tinderbox. Its oil production amounts to about 2 percent of the world's output, and accounts for an even smaller percentage of U.S. oil imports. But Jonathan Cogan, spokesman for the U.S. Energy Information Administration, pointed out that the energy market is global, with countries experiencing a shortfall competing for supplies elsewhere.
Saudi Arabia, the world's giant in oil production, has excess capacity, which its government has said it will employ to fill gaps in production elsewhere, he said.
The United States has its own strategic oil reserve to tap in emergencies, and is a member of an international reserve as well, Cogan said.
Three U.S. House Democrats — Reps. Edward Markey of Massachusetts, Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut and Peter Welch of Vermont — on Thursday urged President Barack Obama to tap the domestic reserve, CNN reported. The three said supply disruptions and rampant speculation in the oil markets are hurting American consumers and businesses by contributing to high prices.
Bill Stevens, executive vice president of the Texas Alliance of Energy Producers, said it's too early for any disruptions from turmoil in the Middle East to affect domestic production of oil.
In Texas, oil producers already have been quite busy in such areas as the South Texas Eagle Ford field and in the Permian Basin, he said. Oil priced at $100 a barrel eventually would have an impact, even though the industry had been prospering with $75-$85 oil, he said. But greater impact on drilling activity would arise from natural gas priced substantially higher than $3.50 to $4 per thousand cubic feet, he said.
Neal Coates, chairman of Abilene Christian University's political science department, said the long-range geopolitical effect of the Middle Eastern uprisings should prove a bigger story than a short-range shock in energy prices.
Coates said he sees parallels in the situation in several Arab countries where the people seek to rid themselves of despotic rulers to the democratic uprisings in Eastern Europe in the late 1980s and early 1990s that threw off communist regimes.
"What is going to be the government of these different countries" is a question for the future to answer, he said. For the latest updates PRESS CTR + D or visit Stock Market news Today
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